By Daniel Greenfield December 14th, 2012

America now has its second worst mass shooting. And it, is as usual, accompanied by calls for gun control. It’s no coincidence that we have had quite a few spree killings in such a short time. The lavish coverage of every shooting by the media encourages every shooter to think that he will be famous if he goes out and kills. And that is exactly what happens.

Our shooters are creatures of the media, not the NRA. A media that turns killers into celebrities and then warns that the only way to stop more shootings is by cracking down on firearms.

But no amount of media coverage ever stopped a man with a gun. It only encouraged him. It takes a gun to stop a man with a gun. That is the hard truth of human affairs. It is why we have a Second Amendment, it is why we have armies and police, and it is why people own guns.

There is no going back to a time before people owned guns. There is no going back to a time when violence did not exist. There is only the reality that killers stalk the streets and that we can either defend against them or take comfort in empty outrage.

Guns stop shootings. Not all the time and not every time, but they do. Gun control does not. Media coverage calling for gun control does not.

Gun crime was up 35 percent in the UK which has harsh gun control laws. And Europe has had plenty of its own school massacres.

Figures showed the number of crimes involving handguns had more than doubled since the post-Dunblane massacre ban on the weapons, from 2,636 in 1997-1998 to 5,871.

The media will pretend that this sort of thing only happens in America. It doesn’t only happen in America. It happens where killings do.

Gun control isn’t about putting an end to horrors, it’s about controlling people. And people who are used to being controlled have even less ability to cope with the uncontrolled and the uncontrollable.

Regulators think about the big picture. They don’t think about the individual. They think only about how to control people who follow rules. But those murderers, by definition, do not follow rules. They are men who have stepped outside the system and care nothing for its rules. They want to kill, and they will find a way. And when they come, the only way to stop a gun is with a gun.